samagon

some people would stick the pencil in and twist, I had a more devil may care approach and would hold the pencil and spin the cassette around.

congrats! that's awesome!

you guys have it all backwards.

freeways are the blight that need to be hidden (along with the noise pollution). I just wish the other pollution (rubber, and particulate) could be so easily stopped with a wall.

people that live near a freeway have to suffer with the freeway any time they are home. you only have to suffer looking at their homes when you are a traveler on that freeway. 

is there any news on what the resulting island will be called?

maybe there won't be a name and it'll just be called "The Island"?

any time you can cite something as a precedent, it makes it easier for the next group of people to do the same thing. and maybe it's not a mega-rich group of people who would be able to do it next time.

even if that doesn't happen and this is the only instance, it still has an effect, maybe it's less than .01% of the overall property tax uplift for the city, but the uplift of property taxes might afford better training for a number of police officers, or any number of potholes being filled. both of which are desperately needed.

41 minutes ago, 004n063 said:

For me it's just the faux-progressive "big bad apartments vs. sweet little helpless houses" framing they (well, the signs at least) use to make it seem like anything other than NIMBYism. 

this is a big factor for me.

another, bigger factor for me, I am a resident of this city. the ramifications of this will reverberate throughout all of Houston. we already have enough quazi zoning, and we don't need more regulations pushing even more zoning like rules on our city, specifically, we need more density, not less.

sure, it may suck to see a Zone 'D Erotica next to the Galleria (RIP), but the future needs to be more cohesive, interwoven, and density needs to be a part of that future.

so no, I don't live in the immediate area, nor do I have money invested in this project, but I live in the city, and care how the future of our city develops, and if such a small contingent of people had been able to succeed, they would have shifted the future of the entire city scape thanks to their selfish desires. I'm glad they lost, and I wish they would have lost sooner.

and even if you don't care about that, on a impact per acre towards city taxes, a big residential tower is going to have a much higher valuation, and thus tax per acre than those single family homes in the area, which means, if there's property taxes collected from more dense places, that means more potholes filled, all of our infrastructure able to be fixed much quicker, and maybe even before it fails. maybe they can hire more police officers to help keep us safer. better schools. the list goes on. this is a win for whole city.

17 hours ago, 004n063 said:

Appreciate the info, but I couldn't help but chuckle at "stay in the east end" - they're barely at the east beginning!

Which got me wondering (sorry, a little off-topic) - where does the East End "begin" for y'all (not necessarily talking about the technical district boundaries for the Greater East End district)? I think for me that rail line next to 65th is the dividing line

there's the East End Management District, which their coverage starts where EaDo ends, as a western border.

that about the only officially named area with East End in the name.

my mom (and probably anyone who grew up in Houston before freeways defined borders), who grew up on Truett and Dismuke, went to Austin HS, she'd probably define EE as everything east of the westbelt railroad. (which is pretty much where the EEMD starts)

myself, before I moved here, I thought of anything east of 59 as the east end (which affirms @JClark54), now that I've lived here for 15 years (mostly at Telephone and Broadmoor), I'd probably use that same coloquial border she does. there's definitely a clear difference at that point. west of that (excluding the newer townhomes) it's mostly warehouses/industrial, and not high quality homes. east of that, there's less warehouses, and more homes, and of higher quality. at least, of the older stock. 

where you are seeing the start of the east end, basically, at wayside, I would say is smack dab in the middle of the east end. I bet if you canvassed 100 people, you'd probably get about 10-20 different responses for where the east end historically, and currently would have begun.

to the greater point, I'd think that most people who live with freeways, and probably don't live here, or have the influence of others who might have defined things before freeways, anything north of Gulf Freeway, east of 59, and south of Buffalo Bayou is Houston East End.

of course, with all the stuff happening north of Buffalo Bayou, I'd guess in 50 years the East End may include anything south of I-10 too. the same as the border of The Heights continues to grow over the years.

16 hours ago, Amlaham said:

Hopefully this plan falls through :) The highway is legit in great condition; I often drive on here. 

TXDOT is legit going to choke the crap out of Houston with the construction thats legit planned at almost every highway within the loop.  

this is true, the only traffic that is created on that section of loop is around the construction on 288.

14 hours ago, kennyc05 said:

I'm going to be honest for the most part it is but once you get closer to the 45 interchange it's terrible the main Lane bridges need to be rebuilt as well as the whole interchange besides the new ramps that were just built.

yeah, but if you look at the image of the construction area, the Gulf Freeway/610 interchange isn't highlighted as being included. maybe they just didn't highlight things correctly, but it doesn't look like that's part of the vision for now.

1 hour ago, kennyc05 said:

So I'm guessing they're gonna tear out all those trees they planted.

laugh and sad emoji reaction at the same time.

I suspect this is designed to dovetail with the spur 5 build.

speaking of favorite places that are losing their land...

I've chatted briefly with the owner of Huynh, and asked what they plan on doing, I know they plan on keeping on, we just never got to that part of the conversation before he had to move on to another table.

you first have to realize that most of the stops on the proposed BRT correspond to existing bus routes, and very likely, those stops are the ones that are not as negotiable as other stops.

in the flyover video they show the stations right on the intersections, but it also says on that video that the locations are subject to change.

if I were to guess, I'd guess that the Mandell station might end up in the middle of the block between Dunlavy and Mandell, the Shepherd station will end up on the West side of Shepherd, and the Montrose station will stay on the West side to keep it as safe as possible for the students of the university.

since both Shepherd and Montrose have existing bus routes, I am not sure those stops will be subject to change.

3 hours ago, Reefmonkey said:

That's where they always have been most heavily concentrated (I lived in midtown from 2000-2004). If they seem to be more conspicuous recently, that may be due to TXDOT kicking them out from under certain overpasses TXDOT owns the land under.

yep, I've lived/worked/played in and around the downtown/midtown area for 15 years now, and it looks worse than ever. maybe I'm just paying more attention to it in my older age? dunno.

the camps that used to be under various freeways are gone now, so yeah, that might also be a contributing factor.

34 minutes ago, Reefmonkey said:

 

Homelessness is definitely NOT worse. The Coalition for the Homeless does a census every year, that includes both people living on the streets and in shelters, and the number last year was less than 3,200, down from over 8,400 ten years ago. Houston has actually received national attention for the success of its program to address homelessness, and over the past decade has moved more than 25,000 homeless people directly into apartments and houses. The overwhelming majority of them have remained housed after two years. According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development's 2020 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress, Houston did more than twice as well as the rest of the country at reducing homelessness over the previous decade. The program started with Anise Parker, but Turner deserves a lot of credit for keeping it going and expanding and adding onto it.

perhaps all of Houston has fewer homeless, but maybe they have congregated in the area around downtown and midtown, which is where I seem to see a lot of them.

16 hours ago, X.R. said:

Wanted to discuss something bike related and I feel like this thread is the best place for it. We have wonderful lanes on Austin and Caroline and I use them all the time. In the same vein, Gray is a great resource. I don't really get why I see people on bikes on Fannin and San Jacinto. San Jacinto especially because the protected bike lanes, once you pass a few after the underpass, are one street to the right. I saw some riders taking San Jacinto into downtown and then turning towards discovery green. Then ran into the same riders going back up on Fannin later in the day. Genuinely miffed, I don't get it. The riders were all kitted out too, so you'd think they would know about the paths. What am I missing? 

I want all riders to be safe, and the safest bet is away from high traffic areas and on the lanes.  

I don't know about Fannin, but San Jacinto I can speak to. when I was training heavily for my half ironman, I would do a circuit that included a leg that went from Hermann park into downtown first on Caroline,then I would jog over to San Jacinto. 

San Jacinto specifically because the lights were timed, if I went 25mph I could catch green all the way from Alabama to Webster, which I think was only 2 lights, but still, it was nearly a mile of being able to push hard uninterrupted by stop lights, or stop signs.

that was nearly 10 years ago now though, so the lights may be timed differently now. 

the Austin section of bike lane is nice for a leisurely ride.

on the subject, I still don't understand why they didn't choose to use Caroline for the bike lane south of Alabama street, that would have been much safer than the current configuration bike lane, and actually I choose to take that over the current bike lane that runs parallel a few streets over. 

21 hours ago, wilcal said:

I'm glad that we can cuss on HAIF now. Was always frustrating to have the cuss words replaced with a random word instead.

a welcome improvement!

now that I know this, yeah, he totally ate his shit.

nice. I'll send this over to my friend. he ate his poop as we crossed the rails here on our bicycles.

probably all linked. I read that thread on Reddit, sounds like the kids are exceedingly stupid, so they should be pretty easy to find.

just another place to add to the list of areas not safe to ride.

On 5/24/2023 at 6:46 PM, Texasota said:

ugh I want it now.

settle down Veruca 😉

it's encouraging, there's a lot of conversations happening around very pointed transportation topics. parking requirements, pedestrian safety, intersection safety, vehicle size disparity, creating roads that cater to more than just drivers. lots of specific topics in the general transportation sphere are starting to be taken to more mainstream discussion areas.

it's odd, the safety of the driver (and their occupants) has been a topic for generations now (since the mid 60s), but that's as far as any transportation topics have ever gotten in the USA. "Hey guys, we made driving the car safer for the driver and the occupants of that vehicle safer, job done!".

when you look at all of these topics as a group of transportation topics, you can certainly see that in the next few years (or maybe I'm being too generous and it'll take decades), that we are priming ourselves to make some adjustments to the current normal transportation methods.

my guess, if it were to become something more than just continue on being what it is, which is a warehouse, it could be a great location for art studios.

the office of the mayor has his biography online.

https://www.houstontx.gov/mayor/bio.html

it's not particularly impressive to me.

I recall one of the things he promised when he ran for office was to eradicate potholes. I haven't seen a lot of action there.

I have seen the complete streets stuff make some strong moves through making the bicycle network a lot more robust, but I wonder, are these things that would have happened regardless of who was in that office, or did he lead a charge that accelerated change in this?

homelessness seems to be worse, crime too, but those are endemic across the nation, I think.

@dbigtex56 mentioned some pretty condemning things in another thread, specifically as they relate to public housing.

I'm a huge proponent of de-gendering all words.

I have an ottoperson in my living room. I don't go to Hermann park, I go to Personpersonn park, etc. /s

anyway, last week I was walking by what will be the Hub, it looks like they have covered the basement area.

On 5/4/2023 at 12:39 PM, j_cuevas713 said:

Wow yeah F that, 20+ years!? And they wouldn't start on the capped park section until 2031. I've been on the fence about this for a while but this schedule just convinced me this is not what we need. 

it'll be the slowest moving train wreck in the cities history.

On 5/12/2023 at 7:34 PM, Ross said:

I know all about moving for work. From the time I was born until I left home to go to college, we moved 9 times, including overseas. I've moved 9 times since finishing my degree, with 7 years overseas in 4 different countries.

I was responding to the point about having areas that are walkable and located near to work locations. I think that's an unreasonable expectation in Houston given how many different work locations are in the Greater Houston area. Implying that a person should move within Houston every time their work location changes is impractical at best, and really bad at worst. No one is going to be excited about moving 5 miles to be next to the new work location, with kid's schools to worry about, whether the available accommodation is any good, whether there are decent amenities, etc. If you own your home it's much worse. It just generally works out better to stay where you are and find a way to get to work.

I've worked for the same company for coming up on 21 years. in that time the office has had 4 locations, and is completely closed as of now, ownership is going to be getting a new office (primarily to have a conference room, and customer training area). so I'll be able to say, in the next year or two, 5 locations, 22 years.

I used to live in the 'burbs, and commuting when the office wasn't near the house was a 1 hour affair from one 'burb to another. luckily, for most of that I could just toss cruise control and go, but about 30% of the drive was in stop/go traffic not on freeways.

anyway, I now live in the east end, and can happily say that for the 15 years that I've been in the area, my commute at office #2 was 20ish minutes, and #3 and 4 was less than 15 minutes (including the walk from the car to the office desk).

I don't think I'll be so lucky next office, rumor is that will be near i-10 Campbell area, so I'll be back to a 20-30 minute commute.

meanwhile, some folks have only ever rented, and they move with the office, others lived within minutes of the first office and have grumbled every time the office moves farther away from the primary location. a few quit. I'm out here just shrugging at the whole thing. I'm sure there's some actuarial table to assess that risk.

it's whatever, we all assume various risks in our lives and there are trade-offs for those risks. the big problem is though, the actual cost of living in the suburbs gets hidden in new developments paying for older ones (aka, roads and other maintenance of the older stuff that exists in those towns is paid for by taxes from new owners, there's little maintenance for the new stuff, so they don't have to worry about that for 10ish years, and then they just need to get some freeways expanded and woo some developers to build more homes), at some point that party is going to end and someone is going to be left holding the bag. and if freeway construction that helps promote that behavior is any indication, everyone is going to be paying those checks when they come due.

I think it's safe to say they are starting on this project. 

they have some earth tools on site now, and have moved some dirt around on the mound that is just north of University Avenue.